Spaceships and Cave Paintings
by chaletian
Summary: 150,000 years after Daybreak, the discovery of ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ isn’t all it appears.


**Spaceships and Cave Paintings**

**by Liss Webster**

Dr Cath Crawford of All Souls, Oxford, pushed greying hair out of her eyes as the landing helicopter blew gusts of wind around her, whipping up the red soil of Africa's Rift Valley. Harry Cunningham emerged, dressed in safari gear like he was living in a Boys Own novel circa 1905, and jogged over to her.

"Cath," he shouted over the beat-beat-beat of the helicopter. "Good to see you. Sorry I'm back so late but," the helicopter engine cut out, and he moderated the volume of his voice, "but the press took longer to deal with than I thought."

"Right," said Cath. "The press." Harry adored the press, of course. As one of the directors of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, as far as he was concerned the more publicity the better.

"They're going nuts over our 'Mitochondrial Eve,'" he continued as they walked towards the sturdy tents set up for the archaeologists and anthropologists that made up the dig. "And once they hear about the cave paintings – I got the message when I was on my way back out here – they're going to go absolutely bollocking crazy."

"You want to see them?" said Cath, coming to a halt.

Harry's eyes gleamed. "Are you kidding? Lead the way, Doctor."

She did just that, taking him towards a low escarpment of rich red rock, and ducking under an overhanging. "The entrance is pretty low," she said, pointing to a gap of about a foot high above the ground marked with numbered tags. "The land's silted up round here." Harry scrambled through the hole, and she followed him. Inside, the cave was carefully lit with torches designed to limit their impact on the delicate cave paintings.

"Jesus," breathed Harry, reaching out, fingers hovering millimetres over the paintings. "They're… wow." They were beautiful indeed, thousands of minute representations of daily life in the valley. Hunting, dancing, fucking, living, dying.

"Amazing, right?" said Cath. "We were totally bowled over."

"You're telling me," said Harry, unable to drag his eyes away. "Have you dated them?"

"Started to. Initial results put them in roughly the same period as 'Eve'."

"Jesus. Wait till I tell the press. Wait until…"

"About that." She beckoned him further into the cave. "You might want to hold off for a while." There was a narrow passage, and they followed it into a larger cavern where yet more pictures adorned the walls, image upon image, tiny prehistoric person upon tiny prehistoric person. Harry spun on his heel, barely able to take it all in, barely able to _see_, barely able to…

"Wait a second!" He froze, moved closer to a picture painted about three feet off the ground. "What the fuck is that?"

"What's what?" asked Cath innocently. "Oh, you mean the spaceship. Yeah. We were wondering about that."

"You're screwing with me."

Cath sighed. "To be honest, I really wish I were. But no, sadly I'm not."

"Fuck!"

"Yeah."

"I mean… _fuck_." He slammed a fist against the wall. "They're a hoax."

Cath nodded. "Looks that way. Unless, of course, aliens landed on earth 150,000 years ago."

Harry glared at her. "I don't appreciate the humour, Doctor," he said coldly. "Fucking hell." His face brightened slightly. "Still, it's not like the press know about this. And we've still got Mitochondrial Eve, right?" Cath remained silent, and his gaze sharpened. "Right?"

She shrugged, and headed back for the passage. "You'd better come with me," she said.

They headed back for the tents, Cath pushing aside the heavy polythene curtains that protected their work from the world outside. She led Harry to a table containing a coffin-sized container of earth. Inside it was a skeleton, ancient, yellowing, partly fossilised.

"Male, somewhere between forty and sixty years old. We discovered it about fifty yards from Eve," she said. "You see the position of his arms?"

"Ceremonial burial," said Harry, interested. "This must be one of the earliest examples."

"Eve was the same. Given that, and the close location of the bodies, it's possible we've found some sort of burial site." She blew her hair out of her face. "I mean, what're the odds, right?"

"So what's the problem?" demanded Harry. "I mean, we've tested Eve seven ways from Sunday."

"And we're testing this guy too," replied Cath. "So far we're getting exactly the same results. Which is brilliant, except for this." She pulled on a pair of gloves, and beckoned Harry closer, indicating an area by the man's upper right femur. "This side is mostly fossilised," she said. "You see there?" There were a series of small, parallel lines imprinted into the stone. Harry squinted a little.

"What is that? Is that…?"

Cath nodded. "Staples." She looked up at him, one eyebrow lifting slightly. "_Titanium_ staples."

Harry stared at her for a moment. "Fuck!"

Cath shrugged wryly. "And we're back here again."

"Fuck! Fucking, fucking… fuck." He pulled off his gloves, and threw them onto the ground.

"That was pretty much all we said for about a day," said Cath. "It's one hell of a hoax. I actually have no idea how they pulled it off. We've done every test we can think of, and the results are still saying these bodies, and the paintings, are 150,000 years old, give or take. But…"

"But there's no way."

She shook her head. "Titanium surgical staples and spaceships? No way."

Harry sighed, and propped his hands on one of the tables, leaning forward. "Unless we have, in fact, discovered proof that earth was invaded by aliens." They stared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"Right," said Cath. "It was the aliens."

"I don't think even the National Enquirer would buy that story," said Harry. "Too bad. Those paintings were beautiful."

Cath smiled, but it faded as she looked back at 'Adam'. "It's a shame," she said softly. "I could've sworn they were the real deal, you know? I thought I could _tell_." She shrugged slightly. "Guess not."

oOo

She Googles aliens and creation and civilisation, just _because_, but mostly she finds recaps of Stargate episodes, and she closes her browser, because spaceships? Seriously? There's no way.

She wishes it was real and she could understand it. She wishes she could see who did the paintings. She wishes a lot of things. But the dig is closed down and 'Adam' and 'Eve' become one more historical mystery.

THE END


End file.
